Tutorial: Start exploring Moodle

2. Finding your way around

• How you navigate around a site depends on your administrator's settings and your version of Moodle.
• With the latest version of Moodle, using the standard "Boost" theme you will see three links at the top when  you first log in.
• Home takes you to the front page;
• Dashboard shows you a timeline of tasks you have to complete, a calendar and items you have recently accessed;
• My courses shows you courses you are enrolled in. If you are not yet enrolled in any courses you won't see anything there.
• A user menu top right when logged in has quick links to useful areas of Moodle. You can edit your profile and preferences from there, view grades, change the language you see instructions in, and more.
• You can access messages and notifications from the icons at the top and do a global search if enabled.
• Once inside a course, you will notice a collapsible Course index on the left which displays course sections and the items within them.

 The following video explains how to find your way around a Moodle.

Finding your way around:

How you find your way around a Moodle site depends on the administrator settings, the theme or background used and how up to date your version of Moodle is.

This video shows Moodle version 4..

Some Moodle sites have attractive front pages;

MoodleCloud sites simply have the login box. Let's log in.

Once logged in, you can edit your profile by clicking top right - for example to add a profile image. You can also access any messages, and set your own message preferences, and notifications and set your notification preferences from the icons.

Often when you log in, you're directed to a personal page called your dashboard.Your admin might have set a different first page or they might let you specify your own choice of page from your preferences.

From the dashboard you l see a timeline of any deadlines due from courses that you're enrolled in, along with a calendar and from the expandable block drawer on the right, a block showing you course items you last accessed.

Our Moodle user Sam doesn’t yet have any activities in her timeline so let’s go to another site and look at student Paula.

In her timeline she can view activities by due date or by date or activity type or name; she can quickly see what is overdue and what she needs to do to complete activities and from the expandable block drawer the items

she’s recently viewed.

By enabling Edit mode top right our student- and any Moodle user - can add extra blocks if desired.

And blocks may be moved from the side into the central area and up and down there.

Also at the top of the screen is a link Home. back to the site front page and My Courses.

Clicking here takes you to the courses you are enrolled in, either as a student, as here or as a teacher.

You can see all courses, those in progress, future or past and starred courses are ones bookmarked or favourited.

You can sort by course name or last accessed and courses can display in list view, summary view or, as here card view.

If we click into a course as student Paula, we can access useful links from the question mark icon bottom right, which also shows a link to site support.

The course index on the left can be collapsed to free up more space.

It scrolls independently of the central area and activity completion indicators display at a glance what our student has completed and has still to do. If she clicks on an item in the course index, the activity opens up in the central area.

If blocks have been added to the course, the block drawer can be expanded to access them. 

From the central area. Student Paula can access Participants, Grades and Competencies.

Her teacher can also access extra course settings, Reports and from More, some other useful features we explore in other videos.

As you move down the central area, the course index follows the path and highlights the location. Activities and resources are neatly defined within ‘cards’ and the activity completion conditions are now positioned to the right of the item.

Sections may be collapsed and expanded, in the central area and /or from the course index.